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Classic Car: Enzo Ferrari

If you were able to get up on Sunday morning to catch the first race of the 2010 Formula 1 season in Bahrain, then not only did you get to see a dope race, you got to see Ferrari rise back to the top of the podium with first and second place finishes. Yeah, they only got the top spots because Sebastian Vettel's car broke down, but whatever. If the pre-season testing and the Bahrain Grand Prix are any indication, Scuderia Ferrari is gonna be a beast. To celebrate their victory, we thought it only right to pay homage to one of the best road cars ever built by the boys in red: the Enzo Ferrari (not the Ferrari Enzo). Built in honor of their founder of the same name, the Enzo was and still is a work of art. Built using knowledge from Ferrari's F1 endeavors it still remains one of the best super cars ever. Read on to find out why...

DRIVETRAIN: Ferrari had a goal in mind when developing the Enzo. Besides paying homage to their founder, they wanted to build a car to dethrone the best super car of the time, the McLaren F1. Powering the Enzo is Ferrari's F140 6.0L V12 engine putting out 651 hp and 485 lb-ft of torque. It's monstrous. Once you hit the red start button on the center console the engine note is reminiscent of a Formula 1 racer. Putting the power to the wheels is Ferrari's F1 gearbox—a semi-automatic six speed transmission that uses paddles on the steering wheel to change gears in just 150 milliseconds.

DESIGN:Billed as a road legal race car, the designers took great pains to make sure that two things were achieved: great aerodynamics and low weight . To achieve the latter, they built the entire body out of carbon fiber. If that sounds expensive to you, well, it is. The sticker price of an Enzo back in 2003 was north of $600,000. The weight savings continued on the interior as well. There are no carpets, no sound proofing, not even any power windows. All in the name of weight savings. Its aerodynamics were a slightly different story. While not as slippery as most super cars, it did best them in downforce. Downforce is the amount of pressure keep the car on the road—the more of it you have, the better. The Enzo was able to produce 775kg of downforce thanks to Ferrari's Formula 1 background. Basically, if it went fast enough, it could drive on the ceiling.

PERFORMANCE: So you have a motor that is capable of putting down over 600 horses, a body that is as slippery through the wind as it is lightweight—what does all that get you? A 0-60 time of 3.4 seconds and a top speed of 217 mph.